Ah, Sun-flower

Monday, August 06 2007 by Dave Marshall

With the sunshine finally (and very slowly!) approaching us, it's the perfect time to decorate your houses with some summery flowers that will make you smile. Looking through our summer collection, I stumbled across our bouquet of sunflowers that are currently on special offer:

And what represents the joy of being under glorious sunshine better than sunflowers?

Not only are sunflowers one of the more useful flowers - producing sunflower seeds and sunflower oil for our consumption just to name a few, they are also known to symbolise longevity and adoration. At the more political end of the spectrum, they are also the symbol of a world free of nuclear weapons which stemmed from their representation of hope.

Some interesting trivia about sunflowers:

According to legends, the original form of the sunflower was awater-nymph named Clytie. Besotted by the beauty of the Sun God,Apollo, she would stare at him all day. Her love was never returned,and after starving herself for 9 days, she became rooted to the ground,and other gods who took pity on her turned her into the sunflower.Today she is still in love with the Sun!

The sunflower myth - if a girl puts three sunflower seeds down herback, she will marry the first boy she meets. Hmm..not sure I wouldlike to try that.

The florets (which are the centre of the flower) of sunflowers form oneof the most mesmerizing patterns infused with symmetrical beauty seenamongst cut flowers. For the more mathematically inclined - if you lookclosely enough, you will see that the florets form interconnectingspirals, where the number of right and left spirals are successiveFibonacci numbers. Each floret is also oriented to the next at roughlythe golden angle, constituting a delectable visual feast. Ideal flowersto give to the mathematicians and scientist friends and relativesamongst you!

These beautiful yellow flowers have also inspired many artwork andliterature in the past, the most notable of which may be the series ofpaintings done by Van Gogh which captured the life of sunflowers atdifferent stages. A random fact - according to some research, VanGogh's Sunflowers was the painting most preferred by bees!

That's it for now...except for a poem by William Blake for a little sunflower pondering for today.

'Ah Sunflower, weary of time,Who countest the steps of the sun;Seeking after that sweet golden climeWhere the traveller's journey is done;

Where the Youth pined away with desire,And the pale virgin shrouded in snow,Arise from their graves, and aspireWhere my Sunflower wishes to go!'